edit questions and answers

Privilege type: Moderation privilege

Awarded at: 2,000 reputation

What is edit questions and answers?

We believe in the power of community editing. That means once you've generated enough reputation, we trust you to edit anything in the system without it going through peer review. Not just your posts—anyone's posts!

When should I edit posts?

Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do so. Editing is encouraged!

Some common reasons to edit are:

to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes

to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it

to correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages

to add related resources or hyperlinks

Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.

How do I edit posts?

The edit link is available under each post.

What happens when I edit a post?

The post will be updated to show the latest editor, as well as the original author. All edits are saved and tracked in a revision history with attribution to each editor.

The revision history can be viewed by clicking the date and time next to the edited post (e.g. "edited 3 days ago").

Editing a post also bumps the question to the top of the homepage. Please be mindful of this and make your edits count, so that the new attention is brought to something substantial.

Reviewing suggested edits

In addition, users with this privilege level can also begin reviewing suggested edits (which previously you would have had to suggest). These edits remain in a pending state until they get enough votes to either approve them and make the edits take effect or reject them and discard the edit. Two votes in either direction will finalize the action, except on Stack Overflow where three votes are required.

Aside from reviewing suggested edits, the low quality posts queue is also made available. This queue contains posts which were deemed of low quality by the system. Users are charged with the task of editing to improve their formatting and content, recommending deletion if it doesn't belong on our site, or marking that it is an acceptable post.